Thursday, July 31, 2014

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Europe Has an Anti-Semite Problem

Bernard-Henri Lévy: Europe Has an Anti-Semite Problem:

The current war in Gaza has been an opportunity for anti-Semites throughout Europe to mass in the streets—and often do much worse. In the Wall Street Journal, TAI board member Bernard-Henri Lévy denounces the selectivity of European protesters who rage over civilian deaths in Gaza while ignoring atrocities committed by Assad and Hamas. He asks:

About the crowds on Friday in Paris chanting “Palestine will overcome” and “Israel, assassin”: Where were they a few days earlier when news broke that over the previous weekend Syria’s civil war had produced 720 more dead, adding to the 150,000 others who have not had the honor of demonstrations in France? [...]

Will these people, “outraged” for a day, claim that they did not know, that they saw no images of the others who died, and that today only images have the power to stir them to action? That is not going to work. Because they had seen what was happening in Syria. As reporters later discovered, those same grisly images, or older versions of them, were appropriated, doctored and retweeted by organizers of the anti-Israel demonstrations under the dishonest hashtag GazaUnderAttack.
As Lévy observes, those who really want to save the lives of Palestinian children should demand Hamas stop storing missiles in UN schools, or running their operations from hospitals. And be sure to note this and be horrified:

[The anti-Israel protesters] are also unperturbed upon learning, from the very mouth of the Hamas leadership (Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4), that in 2012 alone the construction of the infamous Gaza tunnels cost the lives of 160 Palestinian children who were turned into little slaves and buried in the rubble.
We urge you to read the whole thing. If only Europe’s anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic, protesters would do the same.